The telecommunication industry in the United States, as well as abroad, faces a unique set of circumstances. The telecommunication industry as a whole suffers from an over capacity of installed telecommunication resources. Yet despite this over capacity, every telecommunication service provider, however, is exposed to service requests in specific cities, countries, or regions of the world where it has available less than adequate managed telecommunication resources to deliver the requested services to customers.
The problem of over capacity of telecommunication resources arises most markedly at layer one of the telecommunication hierarchy. Layer one telecommunication resources have been deployed beyond the level the market place presently requires and beyond the level reasonably expected to be necessary in the near future. Layer one resources are the physical resources, such as copper lines, coaxial cables, fiber circuits, wireless bandwidth, digital cross connects, optical switches, electrical switches, and other physical resources used to provide telecommunication services. At present, installed layer one telecommunication resources drastically exceed the needed resources in many areas. The excess layer one resources include completely unused resources, such as unused optical fiber typically referred to as “dark fiber.” Excess layer one resources also include resources that are in use but under utilized, such as transmission facilities like optical fiber that has been “lit”, meaning equipped and put in use, but that is being used at well below its possible capacity. Excess layer one resources represent a significant investment for telecommunication service providers—an investment that in many instances provides little or no return and questionable prospect of returns in the foreseeable future.
The problem of under capacity of telecommunication resources most often relates to the lack of layer one resources within particular markets or geographical areas for a particular telecommunication service provider in need of such resources to provide service to customers. While a particular telecommunication service provider's resources may be under utilized in at least some markets, the service provider may lack resources in other markets where it needs such resources to provide services to its customers. Faced with such a situation, the telecommunication service provider historically had to choose between not offering the service needed by a customer, incurring the expense of deploying additional layer one resources to service that customer, or acquiring access to unmanaged layer one resources from other telecommunication service providers with resources deployed in the market. Frequently, none of those options are desirable or available within timelines acceptable to the customer and the telecommunication service provider involved.
A decision to not provide services needed by a customer is obviously damaging to both the customer and the telecommunication service provider. Such a course leaves the customer without needed services, and the customer must then pursue alternative arrangements to meet its telecommunication needs. The telecommunication service provider that declines to provide services loses possible revenue and risks harming a customer relationship. A telecommunication customer in this situation may ultimately obtain services from multiple telecommunications providers. This can increase the total cost of telecommunication services to the customer, and will almost always increase the complexity of the customer's telecommunications operations. While few would prefer such a situation, this is often forced upon customers if a single telecommunications provider cannot provide that customer with all telecommunication services required for its various locations. Clearly, simply not providing service to a customer when a telecommunication service provider lacks the layer one resources needed to provide the service is unappealing.
It may seem that the most straight forward way for a telecommunication service provider to provide services to a customer needing services for which the service provider lacks required layer one resources is to simply physically deploy the required layer one resources. Several obstacles prevent this seemingly simple solution from being feasible in most circumstances. First, the time required to deploy the required layer one resources often far exceeds the time frame within which a customer needs the service. Second, the cost of deploying the resources often greatly exceeds the revenues likely to be received by the telecommunication service provider from the customer for the needed services. Third, once the layer one resources are deployed they are likely to be under utilized and, therefore, unprofitable for the telecommunication service provider. For these and other reasons, deploying additional layer one resources to meet a customer's service needs is frequently impractical for both the customer and the telecommunication service provider.
Given the unsatisfactory nature of simply not providing a customer a service it needs and the impracticality of deploying the layer one resources required to provide a customer a service it needs, a telecommunication service provider may seek to access the layer one resources of another telecommunication service provider to provide the customer the needed service. If, as is often the case, a telecommunication service provider has deployed layer one resources in an area, another service provider needing to provide services in that area may seek to access those excess layer one resources to provide a service to a customer. Historically, the layer one resources acquired in this fashion had no systemic management capabilities extended with them. The acquired layer one resources were, essentially, an unmanaged capacity acquisition. While understood within the industry, acquiring such access and providing service to a customer using the resources of another telecommunication service provider is not a simple task.
First, determining what layer one telecommunication resources are available to be accessed in an area and which telecommunication service provider owns those resources is generally manual in nature, process intensive, and time consuming. The network management systems of a service provider's own telecommunication network can readily identify layer one resources are available within that network, but those network management systems cannot identify the layer one resources of other service providers' that are potentially available. Often, identifying what layer one resources may be available from other telecommunication service providers may depend upon the personal knowledge of technicians in an area or a search of public records. Once possible layer one resources in another service provider's telecommunication network are identified, through whatever method, a request to access those resources must be made. After a request to access resources has been made, the telecommunication service provider that owns the requested layer one resources must determine the availability of those resources for access by the requester and determine the terms for that access. Evaluating such a request for access can be complicated by technical issues, business considerations, and extensive government regulation of the telecommunication industry. Even under the best of circumstances, evaluating and responding to a request from another telecommunication service provider to access layer one telecommunication resources can be a time consuming process.
Even if a service can ultimately be provided to a customer using another telecommunication service provider's layer one resources, the need to make individual inquiries to determine the availability of the layer one telecommunication resources of another telecommunication service provider drastically slows the process of establishing service to a customer, as the process of obtaining access must necessarily be completed before a connection can be made using those resources. The need to utilize resources from other service providers also complicates the provisioning process of the telecommunication service provider from being performed, which if not implemented properly can often be even more problematic to a customer than a delay in commencing the needed service. Provisioning refers to the process whereby a telecommunication service provider determines how to route a needed telecommunication connection, determines specific equipment (e.g. multiplexers, digital cross connect systems, etc.) and specific ports to be used, confirms available capacity end-to-end, and tests that connection before establishing it for the customer. Because the telecommunication service provider requesting access to another's layer one resources cannot access those resources and does not know what resources will be made available to it, the provisioning process cannot begin until arrangements have been made for accessing the layer one resources. Without all the information required to provision a requested connection, a telecommunication service provider cannot reliably inform a customer of the cost of the requested service, or even confirm that the requested service is possible. Thus, the customer must wait, often an indeterminate amount of time, not only for a telecommunication service to be provided, but also even for confirmation that the service is possible and what the service will cost. Indeed, difficulties such as these in even providing basic details about a requested service contribute to an unflattering caricature of telecommunication service providers. At a minimum, this delay and uncertainty frustrates customers and interferes with their business.
The result of the above described situation is problematic for both telecommunication service providers and their customers. Despite a general over capacity, even a glut, of deployed layer one telecommunication resources, the resources needed to provide services needed by customers are often not readily available when needed by a particular service provider in a particular market. While an under utilized high bandwidth capacity fiber may be proximate to a customer location, that fiber is often operated by another service provider, one that is not the customer's choice to meet its telecommunication needs. Simply switching to a different telecommunication service provider will often only change the location of the problem, as all telecommunication service providers suffer from limited reach in some areas and markets. As business and life increasingly become global, the problem of limited reach becomes increasingly problematic, with customers needing telecommunication services not only in multiple regions of one country, but also in multiple countries and even multiple continents. Thus, a customer faces a host of mostly access-limited telecommunication service choices, and telecommunication service providers struggle with the paradoxical twin dilemmas of simultaneous over capacity and under capacity of layer one telecommunication resources.
The need exists, therefore, for a system and method for allowing telecommunication providers to quickly, reliably, and conveniently access and manage the under utilized layer one resources of other telecommunication service provider's networks. Such a system should preferably allow for the easy provisioning of a connection and should be transparent to the ultimate customer.